


The Kids Are Alright

by midnightdiddle (gooseberry)



Series: The Kids Are Alright [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Gore, Pulse - Freeform, So many family feels, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2018-04-02 22:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4076191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/midnightdiddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Do you think,” he asks, “everything is different now?”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“Maybe,” she says again, so many maybes, “but it doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of you.”</i></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In which Hope is bitten by a vampire and Lightning tries to pick up the pieces. Also, the real hero of the story is Sazh. </p><p>Some 18,000 words of shameless vampire!fic and family feels. It's pretty much my magnum opus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hope is bitten a few hours after they've reached Oerba.

Oerba has thrown them all off their feet, some of them more physically than others. Vanille is whipping between giddy excitement and a sort of heartbreaking quietness that makes Lightning's gut tighten in pain. Hope is, as always, caught up in Vanille's frenzy, and he follows her with a sick-looking fascination as she tells him about the people who lived here, before it turned into-- this. Fang keeps shooting them all looks like she's daring them to make some comment about Oerba, or maybe about Vanille's frenetic pace. Snow and Sazh are hanging back, the way people hang back in cemeteries, trying to keep from stepping on the graves.

Lightning finds herself lingering in the middle of the group, sliding more by more to Fang's side. Fang looks a little perturbed at first, but when Lightning keeps her mouth shut, Fang's face kinda softens, like it does when she's watching Vanille eat or sleep or just skip ahead, Hope pulled along behind her.

"It was a beautiful place," Fang says. Lightning just nods, because she remembers when her parents died, and she had told her teacher, _it was a beautiful life_. "There were wildflowers everywhere." She scuffs her foot along the road, sends up dust and ground crystal. "Grass, too."

"It sounds beautiful," Lightning says. Vanille and Hope are going around a corner ahead, and she picks up her pace a little, trying to keep them in sight.

"It was." Fang breaks into a jog, rounds the corner with Lightning. Vanille and Hope are looking up at one of the metal communal houses, and Vanille is saying, "This is the last one I slept in, before Fang and I got our Focus."

"Oh," Hope says, and he's frowning like he's still trying to wrap his head around the communal thing, a village full of homes where everyone lives together. "Do you... wanna go up?"

Vanille gives him the bright, sad look they all wear these days and says, "That'd be nice." They wait for Sazh and Snow to catch up, and Vanille regales them with a few dubious tales of past exploits and conquests, and a story of a kiss that makes Fang look uncomfortable.

"What was his name?" Hope asks as they troop up the stairs together, Fang at point and Snow bringing up the rear. Vanille is still holding Hope's hand, swinging it as they walk two steps in front of Lightning. Lightning catches the side of Vanille's smile, and braces herself.

"Her name was Sarisa," Vanille says, and her voice grows brighter, faster. "She was Fang's cousin-- very pretty. I kissed her before she left on her Focus."

"You shouldn't kiss and tell," Fang admonishes as Sazh makes a choking sound. Vanille laughs, clearly unrepentant, and they, all infected by her broken enthusiasm, twirl into the house with her.

There are heavy metal beds, like those in the barracks back at Bodhum, one stacked on top of another. The mattresses and blankets are falling apart from age, and there are seekers lying in the shadows, out of the glaring heat of the crystals and sun.

Lightning is blocking a heavy rush from a seeker when she hears Vanille scream, a shrill sound that ends with a thunderous roar and the smell of ozone. Lightning turns halfway, keeping the seeker in the edge of her sight, and feels the pit of her stomach drop. There is a vampire standing in the back of their group, a few feet from Vanille, and it is holding Hope in a lover's embrace.

Vanille is swinging her rod, and lightning roars through the air again. The ozone is thick enough to burn Lightning's throat, and she reaches out to fling fire at the vampire. Hope's body is limp, and his head is hanging back. The vampire is holding him tighter, closer, and then it's biting him, and it's nothing like the stories Lightning used to tell Serah in the middle of the night.

The vampire is crushing its way through Hope's skin and muscles and bones, tearing the flesh away, and it's now, only _now_ , that Hope moves, head falling further to the side as he starts wailing, an animalistic sound that sounds like it's bubbling through the gaping holes in his neck and chest.

She's readying water to fling, trying to time it with Vanille's lightning, when Snow charges past her and slams his shoulder into the vampire, knocking it off balance. The vampire stumbles, its arms jerking Hope's body with it, and Hope's neck snaps to the side like it's broken. Fang slams into the vampire a moment later, and it falls, skidding up against a blasted wall.

Lightning drops the water, readying a cure as she rushes forward. Fang has already torn Hope out of the vampire's arms, bundling him into Vanille's, and Vanille's staggering back, Hope's body a dead weight dragging her down.

"Give him," Lightning says in a rush, and she takes him from Vanille's arms, falling to her knees so she can pull him into her lap. There is-- not much left. His chest and neck are torn open, and Lightning can see his veins pulsing with blood. The muscles and flesh are flayed, bare to the air, and the bones are crushed. There is too much blood, soaking through her skirt and slick between her legs. She hesitates, then presses her hands against what's left of his neck, trying to put something back together.

"Help me," she begs someone, anyone, and the cures are falling off her fingers like water. She's trying to drown Hope in them, trying to keep something together. Her fingers keep slipping through the flaps of muscle and skin of his neck, and there are pieces of him caught beneath her fingernails. The cures, she thinks, aren't working. "Help me, help me--"

Vanille is saying, over and over, "His heart, his heart-- I can't, his heart--" The smell of ozone is mixing with the smell of blood, and the sharp tang of cures. There's so much magic in the air, drowning them all, but Hope's slipping through them. Lightning is feeling heady.

"Again," Sazh's voice says, and Lightning jumps when his hand lands on her shoulder. "Try again," he repeats, and she forces another cure through her fingertips, into Hope's neck. Her magic feels stronger, steadier, and Sazh's hand is tightening on her shoulder. She looks up for a second, sees that his other hand is on Vanille's shoulder. He's crouched between them, his head bowed, and he's staring at Hope's body. Lightning looks back down, too, and pushes another cure through.

"Slow and steady," Sazh says. "Vanille, go slow and steady. Now. And now." His voice is like a drumbeat, like the pulse of the fal'Cie in Cocoon, and Lightning feels herself following it, piecing the muscle and flesh of Hope's neck back together to the thrum of his heartbeats, of Vanille's cures.

Another breath streams through Hope's neck, then the next wheezes through his mouth. Lightning moves her hands down, tries to close up the gaps of his chest. The breastbone is brittle, doesn't want to hold, and she swallows back tears of frustration. This might be the worst day of her life.

"You got it?" Sazh asks, and Vanille says, "It's steady now. I think--I think it'll keep beating."

 _It_ , Vanille had said, not _him_ , and Lightning pulls the pieces of skin on Hope’s chest together, stitches them with magic. When the next cure leaves her fingers, she lets her head hang forward, lets out a shaky breath. She's feeling dizzy, two steps past heady; she's not their group's healer, and this much magic, this minute control, wears her down. "A minute," she says, "Give me a minute--"

It takes hours to patch Hope back together. Lightning and Vanille take turns, and Sazh holds their shoulders throughout it, boosting their magic. Sometimes, when Lightning is tilting her head back, praying that she won't pass out, she catches Snow's eyes.

"She's outside," Snow says when Lightning asks _Fang?_ "Don't worry, we won't let anything in." He says it with bravado, but there's the same brittleness that was there when Serah turned to crystal. Lightning isn't sure if it's fear, or pain, or the same sickening, drowning self-hatred she can feel in herself.

"I trust you," Lightning says, and she takes over for Vanille so she won't have to see Snow's face.

x

She wakes up from a nightmare of Serah. She can still hear the sound of Serah crying when she sits up, groggy and uncoordinated; her mouth is dry and her tongue is thick. The old beds are rusty and the springs sag beneath the weight of her body, whining as she moves. The lights in the room are dim and flickering, throwing shadows across the floors and walls.

"Lightning?" someone asks very softly. She swallows around her tongue, tries to forget the too-real feeling of Serah crying in her arms.

"I'm awake," she says, and tries not to jump when Fang leans in too quickly, like she's pulled herself out of the moving shadows. Fang's mouth quirks up, like she's trying to decide whether to smile, so Lightning tries a smile back, asks, "What time is it?"

"Not midnight yet." Fang looks over her shoulder, and Lightning follows her gaze. They hadn't dared to move Hope, and he's still lying on the floor, head raised up on Snow's bundled up coat. Sazh is sitting next to him, his back to Lightning and Fang, and the chocobo chick is peeping softly from Sazh's hair. "He's fine, we're watching him."

"Right." Lightning swings her legs off the bed, setting her feet on the floor so she can lean forward. Her head feels heavy, fuzzy like she has a cold, or is still half asleep. "Where’s Vanille?"

“Still asleep,” Fang nods to the bunk above Lightning, “and Snow’s standing out by the door.” Fang touches Lightning’s knee, a quick and dry brush. “You should sleep some more; the magic has to have worn you down.”

“No.” She’s sure that, if she sleeps any more, she’ll hear Serah crying again, and she’ll have to watch her parents die over, and over, and over again. She rubs her eyes and the beginning of the headache in her temples, then stands up. “I want to check on his neck.”

Sazh holds out his hand when she sits next to him, her knees pressing against Hope’s shoulder. She takes his hand, intwines her fingers with his. It’s probably unneeded, he could probably boost her just as well from across the room, but-- it’s nice. Nice to feel someone’s heat, someone’s pulse. He squeezes her hand, like he understands (and maybe he does, because they all know his wife is dead and his son is crystal, that he’s the last one in his family, like they all are), and she sets her jaw, reaches out to pull the blood-soaked bandana back from Hope’s neck.

It’s raw and swollen and crusted in blood. There’s fresh blood in places, and as she watches, more blood seeps through the wet scabs. She hesitates, then pulls back the ruined shirt that’s bunched over his collar. His chest looks just as bad, maybe worse. She pulls his shirt back up to his neck, then lies her fingers along his neck, where his veins lie close to the surface. Four cures and she’s feeling wretched. By the seventh, she’s swaying a little, and Sazh is putting an arm around her shoulders, leaning her away from Hope.

“Bad luck,” he says conversationally, “him being our medic and all. But don’t worry, he’ll be fine.” Lightning thinks she must’ve made a face because he grins, shrugs a bit. “You kids are all tough.”

By the time Snow comes in to switch places with Sazh, Lightning’s half asleep again. At Sazh’s nudge, she drags herself back to the bunk, crawling onto the old, creaking springs. The rest of the night passes as a haze, waking and sleeping and waking again, turning her head to watch shadows crouch over Hope’s head. When the first bit of sun creeps through the dirty windows, she passes a hand over her eyes and sits up.

“Sleep well?” Snow asks, looking up from where he’s sitting by Hope. Sazh is sleeping on the floor near them, head pillowed on his arm; Fang is sleeping a few feet away, face turned away from them all.

“Yeah,” Lightning says, clears her throat. Her mouth tastes like sickness, and swallowing makes her wish for Cocoon and home. “Good enough. How’s he?”

“Okay.” Snow shrugs, reaches out to finger a piece of Hope’s hair. “I was thinking-- I mean, vampire and all-- Do you think?” He looks at the sunlight, then looks back at Lightning. Lightning looks at the sunlight, too, where it’s barely edging down the wall.

“Maybe,” she says, and she helps him move Hope’s body to the far corner, where the sunlight won’t (hopefully, hopefully) manage to crawl.

“I mean, it’s stupid,” Snow says after they’ve propped Hope’s head back on the makeshift pillow, and Lightning is checking to make sure he’s not bleeding out of his neck again. “It’s not like, I mean. They’re just stories.”

“You’re an idiot,” Lightning says, then excuses it all. “He’ll be cooler in the shade.”

When Vanille wakes up, she sits by Fang, and Snow and Lightning pretend not to see the way she leans down to whisper in Fang’s ear, or the way Fang presses a hand to Vanille’s thigh, where the fal’Cie’s brand lies. The morning is already awkward, a tension rising in the air. Lightning’s preparing herself to run away, just to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes, when Sazh rolls over with a loud groan. She looks at him quickly, looks away, then looks back as Sazh sits up.

“Too old for this--” His back pops in a series as he curves it back, elbows bent inwards. “Want breakfast, kids?”

Sazh whistles as he digs through their supplies, a bright tune that reminds Lightning vaguely of a pop song on Cocoon. When the tune gets too high, Sazh’s whistle goes breathy, a little shrill; the sound of it all makes Lightning’s muscles start to relax.

“Good at making food with faces,” Sazh says. “Figure you guys aren’t up for cooking, so I can do it today. Whatcha want?”

For all of Sazh’s trying, breakfast is a sad affair. Vanille looks tight and tense, flinching at any too-sudden movement, and Fang looks just as strained. Lightning doesn’t really want to eat, can barely convince herself to force the food down. Snow’s the only one to show anything like appreciation for Sazh’s efforts, and he compliments Sazh over the food, says, “The face is a nice touch. I like the mouth.”

“Yeah,” Sazh says, “that’s the only way I can get Dajh to eat his vegetables.” And like that, the conversation is killed. Vanille makes a sound like she’s been wounded and Sazh flinches, says, “I didn’t--”

They break up after that, everyone going different ways. Lightning helps Fang clean up the leftovers (too many, like no one has much of an appetite), packing away whatever is salvageable. Every few moments, Lightning looks over to the corner Hope is lying, still unconscious. Sazh is sitting beside him now, and Vanille is hovering a few feet away.

“Vanille’s still jumpy,” Lightning says, tactfully not saying, _jumpier than she was yesterday_. Fang tightens the straps on a pack, then straightens up next to her, looking over at the corner.

“She’s upset,” Fang says. “She thinks this is all her fault. She’s always been like this.”

“Serah’s a little the same way.” Lightning clears her throat, licks her lips. “When my parents died, I mean.” She’s said too much, she knows, so she retreats back to the bunkbeds, and lies down on one, turning her back to the room. They won’t be leaving today, probably not tomorrow, either; staying here, so close to all of them, will drive her crazy. She closes her eyes, takes a few slow breaths, and tells herself she’s going to sleep, because at least then she won’t see the way everyone’s on edge, seeing ghosts in the corner of their vision.

She wakes up in the early afternoon, when Snow touches her shoulder to wake her. She rolls onto her back, looking blearily up at him. She had been dreaming of Hope, sprawled out and bleeding through his throat, and waking up throws her, leaves her feeling confused.

“He’s waking up,” Snow says, and it takes Lightning a few moments to realize that he means Hope, and a few more to remember the way Hope’s neck and chest had been crushed through, like dried bark underfoot.

“Okay,” she says as she sits up, swings her feet off the bed. “I’m coming.”

“We thought, since you’re closest to him,” Snow explains, and Sazh moves over when Lightning reaches them, gives her room to kneel down next to Hope’s head. Hope’s eyelids are moving, light things like butterfly wings, and it reminds Lightning of Serah, of when she used to watch Serah sleep. When Serah _could_ sleep.

She’s been kneeling there just long enough for her legs to start to go to sleep when Hope’s eyes open, just barely, just enough to see the color underneath. He breathes differently, a deeper breath, and his eyes close, then open a little more. Lightning leans forward, resting her weight on her hands, and says, “Hope.”

It takes a while for him to wake up enough to really look at her; when he does, she tries to smile at him. She must have managed it pretty well, she thinks, because his face loses some of the tension of pain, smoothing out a little.

“How are you feeling?” she asks. When he opens his mouth, though, she slaps her hand across it, says sharply, “ _Don’t_.” His eyes widen, his breath moist on her palm, and she tries to sound calmer. “Don’t talk yet, your throat must still be sore. Just nod for now.”

He nods, just a tiny movement of his chin, and she smiles. Doesn’t say that she doesn’t know if he can talk, doesn’t know if she and Vanille put everything to right. Just smiles, and says, “Does it hurt?”

He nods.

“Your throat?”

A nod.

“Your chest?”

Another nod.

“Anywhere else?”

He hesitates, looking up at her, then shakes his head. She frowns, sits back on her heels for a moment. Hope is looking desperate, full of all kinds of intent, like when he’d doggedly followed her on Cocoon. Trying so hard not to hold her up, but certain to trip.

“Does it hurt everywhere?” she asks, as gently as she can, like she used to when Serah was sick in bed, before Lightning had joined the Corps. Hope looks up at her, eyes widening and flickering from side to side, then he nods.

She holds his hand until he falls asleep again, and when he’s asleep, breath easing out and pain lines growing more shallow, she brushes his hair back from his forehead, and bathes him in as much magic as she can grasp.

x

She falls asleep before the sun goes down, curled up next to Hope, and she doesn’t wake up until he screams in the middle of the night, an ugly sound coming from his ugly throat. She panics, sitting up and lashing out at nothing, and it’s only when Snow shoulders her out of the way that she comes to her--senses.

“What?” she asks, and Snow says, “A nightmare. I think.”

Snow barely touches Hope’s shoulder, then says, “Get me some water.” Lightning jumps to her feet, feeling stupid and confused, and stumbles to the other side of the room to find a canteen. Her left leg is asleep, feels dull and bloated, and it drags a little when she walks. When she turns back, canteen in hand, she sees Vanille and Fang staring at her from the bunkbeds.

“Here,” she says when she hands the canteen to Snow. Snow takes it, nods, and shakes Hope’s shoulder a little more.

“Hope,” his voice is gruff, with sleep or exhaustion, “you need to wake up for me. Hope?”

Hope’s making sounds like a shot dog, but his eyes are open and looking up at Snow, bright and feverish in the yellow, electric lights. When Snow shakes Hope’s shoulder again, Hope flinches, chin tucking into his neck, and the noises get a little strained.

“I _am_ ,” Hope says between the wounded sounds. His voice is gravelly, sounds like scar-tissue and crusting scabs. “I--don’t, _stop it_ \--”

Snow yanks his hand back, and water from the canteen splashes on the metal floor like raindrops on a tin roof. When Lightning looks, his face looks pale and tight, so she looks away, at a spot on the floor between the three of them, the center of some broken triangle.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, and she moves her eyes just enough to see Hope’s face when he doesn’t respond. “The nightmare?”

Hope sucks in a breath, sharp and fast and painful-sounding, and says, “ _No_.”

“What do you want, then?” Snow asks, and he’s scooting forward next to Lightning. “Anything you want, I’ll get it for you. Promise.”

Lightning wants to punch him. Wants to beat him half to death, because she knows why he’s saying this: knows it’s all guilt, that he’s taking Hope for a bloody banner, a poor replacement for Serah. It’s wrong, and it’s the same thing that Lightning wants to do-- fix the hurt by laving everything onto Hope, throw everything into him and onto him, and make him her lost cause.

Hope’s body shakes, like a shudder of pure _want_ , and Lightning knows what he’s going to say, because she knows what she wants. _My mom_ , because she knows what it’s like to wake up every day and remember, like a new papercut on a day-old scab, that your mom is dead, that she’s never coming back, no matter how long and hard you cry.

“Hope,” she says cautiously, and Hope shudders again, his shoulders inching up.

“Anything?” he asks, and Snow says, an offering, "Anything.”

Lightning’s closing her eyes, readying herself for the fallout, when Hope’s ruined voice says, “A shower.”

“A shower?” Snow repeats, and Lightning opens her eyes so she can roll them. Relief is making her lightheaded, and she has to take it out on them, punching Snow’s shoulder, then bopping Hope on the shoulder.

Between the two of them, they manage to manhandle Hope down to the lake at the bottom of the village without too much trouble. They sling one of Hope’s arms over each of their shoulders, and Hope hangs between them limply, only stumbling when Lightning wraps an arm around his waist to nudge him forward.

“Skinny-dipping on Pulse,” Snow says quietly on Hope’s other side. His voice sounds laughing. “Wait till you tell your friends about this.”

“Skinny-- Not with both--” Hope’s voice cracks and he has to cough, chest heaving for a moment. “Both of you?” he manages when Lightning is rubbing a cure along the curve of his ribs, into his lungs.

“Probably,” she says blandly, and when he coughs again, she says, “Don’t talk, you’ll make yourself worse.”

When they reach the shoreside, Lightning pushes Hope down onto a tipped over oil barrel, grabbing his shoulders to steady him. Hope sways a little, then straightens up, looking towards the lake.

“I can,” he says, “by myself.” Lightning rolls her eyes and takes the ends of his bandana, untying it carefully.

“Don’t worry,” Snow says from behind them, and when Lightning glances over his shoulder, he’s already stripping down, tossing his clothes into a haphazard pile. “It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before.”

Hope makes a noise and looks like he’s trying to decide whether or not he should try to save Lightning’s _virtue_ , or something. Lightning huffs, says, “What Snow _means_ is that the Guardian Corps has communal showers and locker rooms.” She looks a little closer at his face, then says, softer so Snow can’t hear her, “Calm down. I’m not going in with you, I just need to help you get in there with Snow.” Then, louder so Snow _has_ to hear her, “That idiot would drop you if he tried to do it himself.”

“I wouldn’t drop him,” Snow says without bite. He comes closer, kneels down to pull off Hope’s boots. Hope’s face is going pink, and Lightning’s sure it’s only because of the bloodloss that his face isn’t a deep red right now. Lightning pulls Hope’s jacket off, and doesn’t bother to fold it, just dropping it on the ground crystal. She touches Hope’s collarbone, fingers lifted along the thick ridges of scabs.

“Lift your arms,” she says, and he does, slowly and with a wince. She grabs the shoulders of his shirt, lifts it slowly. It’s pulling, though, where it has dried against his scabs, and Hope’s breathing is growing faster. Lightning hisses, then says, “We’ll cut it off. In the water.”

“What?” Hope starts to stand up, sinks back down on the barrel when Lightning pushes down on his shoulders. “But-- I don’t have anything else, it can just-- If you just pull it off fast--”

“It’s stuck to the scabs.” Lightning runs her finger along the collar, where the blood is clotted against skin and fabric alike. “Pulling it off will just open up the wounds. We’ll cut it off. Then you can use _his_ ,” she jerks her thumb at Snow, who’s sitting back on his heels, naked and grinning, “shirt. He’s enough of an exhibitionist.”

“It’s a plan, then.” Snow smacks Hope’s leg, says, “Up, then. Gotta take off your pants, then we’ll dunk you.”

When it looks like Snow really can get Hope in the water without dropping him on his head, Lightning starts to strip. She folds her belt in loose loops, lies it to the side with her sword. Folds up her vest, then shimmies out of her skirt, stepping out of it carefully. She’s unzipping her shell when she hears a splash and Snow laughing.

“Cold, huh?” Snow says, barely loud enough for Lightning to hear, and Hope says something too soft for her to catch. She pulls of her shell, folds it slowly. Stands there for a moment, in panties and a bra, then grabs her knife and heads for the water.

The water _is_ cold, enough to make her balk at the edge. Snow has waded in deep enough that the water is up to his shoulders, and Hope is floating in front of him, probably only held up by Snow. They’re far enough away that Lightning can’t see their faces, not when it’s this dark, but she’s pretty sure they can see _her_ , so she wades in, bending her knees so the water comes up to her stomach, then her breasts.

By the time she’s reached them, she’s standing on her toes to keep her mouth above the water. Snow grins at her over Hope’s shoulder, and she rolls her eyes, then looks down at Hope. “How are you doing?” she asks, and Hope blinks, then kinda shrugs, an awkward movement that sends ripples through the water.

“‘s cold,” he says. Lightning smiles, then grabs his hips under the water, slides her hands down until she’s holding his knees, and starts to pull him back. Hope stiffens, trying to pull away, and asks, "What?”

“The idiot went too deep. He’ll drown us all.” Lightning keeps wading back, pulling Hope with her, and Snow follows, laughing. When Lightning can stand on the flat of her feet, she stops and leans forward. Hope’s shirt is soaked through, and there’s fresh blood on his neck. “Best we’ll get,” she says.

Snow stops laughing, but there’s still a stupid smile on his face. He leans over Hope’s shoulder, asks, “Is it that bad?”

Lightning shrugs, flips open the knife. “It’ll come off, but it’s going to tear some of the scabs. Hope?” She waits until he looks at her. “Tell me if it hurts, ‘kay?” Because it will, she knows. It’s going to hurt like hell, and it’s going to bleed like hell, too. But maybe if he thinks it might not, or if he thinks that she doesn’t know it will, they can get through this a little easier.

Hopes takes a breath, nods, and Lightning slides her fingers under the collar of his shirt, pulls it away from his neck. Hope flinches, and before he can tell her to stop, or say that it hurts, she press the knife to edge of the fabric, and starts to cut.

It’s bad. It’s really, really fucking bad. The shirt’s stuck to his chest, little pieces of fabric healed into his skin, and when she digs it out, piece by tiny piece, he digs his fingers into her shoulders and begs her to stop, tells her it hurts. Snow is talking over the sound of Hope’s voice, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s almost over, she’s almost done,” and every time he says that, she drops a piece of fabric in the water, and starts to dig out another one.

By the time she’s half-done, if that, her hands are slick with blood and Hope’s face is white. Snow’s face, when she looks up, is also white, and he’s staring right at her. Lightning lifts her hand to push her hair back from her face, then stops. Puts her hand in the water to wash off the blood, then lifts it again. Pushes her hair back, and lets out a breath. She feels shaky, like the bottom of the lake isn’t steady beneath her feet.

“Again?” Snow asks, and Hope moans, turning his face away.

“Yeah,” Lightning says, “again,” and Hope doesn’t beg anymore, or say that it hurts.

When the last of the shirt is cut away, Lightning snaps the knife closed and slips it into the side of her panties, where it lies against her hip. She’ll have to clean it later, take it apart so she can get Hope’s blood out of the hinges. Wash her hands, too, dig the threads and pieces of skin out from under her nails. Now, though, she sets her hands on Hope’s shoulders, her thumbs running along his collarbone, and she pushes a little magic in. Enough to close the wounds, turn the blood into a thin layer of scabs.

When Hope looks at her, his head still lying back against Snow’s body, Lightning has to look away. She looks at his throat, where a little blood is still trickling down, and she lies, very quickly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it’d hurt that much.”

“I know,” Hope says, so stupidly trusting, and Lightning wades back, says, “I’ll go get you something to wear,” just so she can get out of there, and away from Hope’s pale, tired face.

She wades back up to the shore slowly, feeling for the lake bottom with each step. The sand is shifting beneath her feet, and her head feels heavy. Pushing through the water is sapping her, and when she finally breaks out of the water, the weight of her body threatens to push her to the ground. She staggers up and over to the oil barrel, and she sinks down on it, puts her head between her knees to breathe for a moment.

“Tired?”

Lightning jumps, grabbing the knife and turning as she staggers from the barrel. Vanille squeaks, steps back and lifts her hands.

“Sorry,” Vanille says, “I didn’t mean-- I thought you saw me when you came out of the water.”

“No, I--” Lightning presses her hand against her chest, where her heart is beating painfully hard. Then she realizes she’s still almost naked, and wet, and she feels heat rush through her, staying in her cheeks. She drops the knife on top of her belt and grabs her shell, tugging it on. “What are you doing down here?”

“I came down to help.” Vanille moves closer, sinks down onto the crystal. “You were already in the water, so I thought I’d wash his clothes. They were pretty--” Vanille pauses, waves a hand. “Stained?”

“I can imagine,” Lightning mutters as she grabs her skirt, tries to pull it up. Her legs are still wet, and the skirt clings to her skin. She curses softly, twists the skirt as she tries to shimmy it up. “How’d it go?”

“Alright.” Vanille is quiet for a moment, then she says, as Lightning is fastening her skirt, “Better than you guys, I think.”

Lightning feels her hands slip, and she stands very still for a moment. Her fingertips feel cold.

“I could hear you,” Vanille says, very softly. “Across the water.”

“Right.” Lightning tries to fasten her skirt again, but her fingers are still cold, numb. She can’t get them to bend properly. She’s staring down at them when Vanille reaches out, grabs her skirt. Tugs it forward to get more slack, then does up the snaps.

“I’m sorry.” Vanille grabs Lightning’s vest, shakes it out, then holds it out. “I don’t think-- You’re stronger than us, you know. I couldn’t do that. I don’t think Sazh could, either, or Snow. Maybe Fang, but she--”

“For you, she would,” Lightning finishes. She takes the vest from Vanille and slips it on, belts it. “Maybe she would for Hope, if you asked her.”

“Maybe,” Vanille agrees. “So it’s really only you. It’s not fair, is it?”

Lightning thinks about it for a moment, about Hope bleeding in the water, and Snow holding him still. About how she had to cut his shirt out of his skin. About Serah, and their parents, and their house with the three mortgages and the lifetime of memories. “No,” she says slowly, “not really,” and when her voice shakes a little, she tells herself it’s because Vanille is hugging her too tight, thin arms wrapped around Lightning’s waist.

She wraps her arms around Vanille’s shoulders, and presses her cheek against the top of Vanille’s head, and thinks of how much it feels like hugging Serah again.

x

Hope sits up to eat the next day. He’s already sipped water, just in little bits, enough to ensure Lightning that his trachea and esophagus are still separated correctly, that the water won’t leak into his lungs and drown him. She’s pretty sure the food will go the same way as the water, but she’s not _entirely_ sure, so she’s sitting next to him, watching like a hawk.

“Like a mama chocobo,” Sazh mutters, and Hope smiles and rolls his eyes, the biggest smile Lightning has seen since the vampire tore his throat out. “Well, here. Dig in. Best in the house.”

It’s poached eggs, courtesy of a nest Vanille found earlier this morning. Sazh even deigned to make a face out of the herbs Fang found, and so two yellow, milky-looking yolks gaze wetly up at them all, over a broad, parsley-green mouth. Lightning can’t decide if it’s adorable or revolting, so she shrugs and looks at Hope, waiting for him to eat.

He throws up five minutes later, a nasty, gut-tearing retching that digs into Lightning’s bones. The eggs come up first, then clots of old, crusted blood. He keeps retching, flecks of fresher and fresher blood until there’s a line of blood, red and wet, running from his mouth. Lightning rubs his back as Vanille murmurs over his head, pouring a cure into his body.

“It was probably too soon,” Lightning says when Hope has finally calmed down. Hope’s eyes look haunted, like he’s reliving everything, and Lightning reaches out, grabs his hand and holds on tight. “Just water for now. Little sips. You’ll get better soon.”

He dozes off like that, laid up in his corner, his head still pillowed on Snow’s coat. When she’s sure he’s finally asleep, she lifts his fingers from hers, pulls her hand away. Snow crouches down beside her, reaches out to touch Hope’s shoulder.

“How is he?” he asks. Lightning shrugs, looks away.

“Good enough. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything--” she wants to say _lasting_ , but she doesn’t know if that’s true. She doesn’t know how much of the stories are true, if they have to hide Hope away in the corner like this, where the sunlight can’t reach the tips of his out-flung hands. “We can probably get going in a few days, once his body has enough blood.”

As soon as she says it, she realizes _what_ she said, and she freezes, running over the words again. “I mean,” she starts to correct herself, but she has to stop. She doesn’t know what she means, doesn’t know what any of this means. Snow shifts beside her, his shoulder barely brushing hers, and he says, “Yeah, I know.”

In the early evening, when Hope wakes up again, Lighting crouches in front of him, asks him, “Can we try something?”

Hope swallows loudly, his throat moving in ripples, and Lightning stares at the scars, sickened and fascinated. “What?” Hope asks, his voice still subdued from the food fiasco of the morning. “I’m not--not really hungry, so if it’s that, I don’t really want to.”

“No,” Lightning says, “no, it’s-- We just need to know, the sunlight and everything.”

“Oh.” Hope’s voice is going high and strained, like it does when he talks about his mother. “Oh. I. Do you think?”

“We don’t know,” Fang says from across the room. She’s standing in the sunlight, and the sun backlights her, makes her face an empty shadow. It’s unnerving, Lightning thinks, and with the way Hope flinches, she’s pretty sure Hope thinks the same thing. “We have to know before we decide where to go from here.”

“If I, that is-- Will you leave me?”

“ _No_. We’ll just change things.” Lighting stands up, holds out her hand. “Come on, Hope. Get up.”

He takes her hand, lets her pull him up, then lead him towards the line of light in the floor. His hand is cold and clammy, and it is shaking. Two feet from the light, he balks, pulling up sharp. She lets go of his hand and steps back, moving to the side so she can see when he touches the sunlight; she’s hoping that it’s a great deal less life-shattering than when Serah turned into crystal.

“I don’t,” Hope says in a very small voice, barely loud enough for Lightning to hear. Lightning is still trying to decide what to say to encourage him when he reaches out, stretches forward on his toes, and lets his fingers cross over into the sunlight.

Lightning takes a deep breath, holds it so she doesn’t throw up. Then lets it out in a whoosh a few moments later. Nothing has happened.

“Hope,” she says, and he flinches again, pulling his arm back quickly, clutching it to his chest. “Did it hurt?”

“No,” he says slowly, “it didn’t feel like anything.” He looks over at her, then at Fang. “Should I try again?”

Lightning looks at Fang, too, and Fang nods, so Lightning nods as well. Hope sidles a little closer to the edge of the shadows, and this time, he holds his entire hand in the sunlight, up to his wrist. Still nothing happens, and Lightning can feel the pit of her stomach drop.

“Thank god,” she breathes, and Fang laughs, says, “You’re a lucky kid, Hope.”

Hope sits down way too fast, like his legs gave out on him, but he looks happier than he has in days. When Lightning pulls him into the sunlight, he even laughs a little, a rough, painful sounding laugh. “I am,” he asks, “aren’t I?”

He lies in the sun for the rest of the evening, sprawled out like a cat. Lightning touches his throat, pushes a little magic into the healing tissue, and feels for his pulse, the steady beats that thump against her fingertips. When the sun is finally going down, Hope turns onto his side, towards Lightning, and asks, “Where’s everyone else?”

“They’re looking for supplies,” Fang answers. She’s moved closer to them, and she’s making some sort of stew for dinner, a hodgeposh of meat and lumpy vegetables. “We’re running low on food.”

“Oh.” Hope reaches out, touches Lightning’s wrist, and Lightning looks down at him, tries to smile. “Because-- You didn’t want them to see. If something.”

Lightning nods, feels a headache from the sharp, jerking motion begin in the back of her head. Fang makes a sound, then stirs the stew faster. “If it-- We had to know.”

“I’m not mad,” Hope says, but he pulls himself laboriously to his feet, waving off Lightning’s hand. “I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”

Lightning watches him head for the corner to grab Snow’s coat, then move to the bed Lightning’s been sleeping in. When he lies down, face to the wall, she turns back to Fang, grabbing a sprig of parsley to shred it to pieces.

“He’ll get over it,” Fang says; her voice sounds careless, but her knuckles are white. “He likes you. He likes all of us.”

“Maybe.” Lightning tosses the parsley into the stew, ignores Fang’s quiet complaints. She’s still sitting next to Fang, listening for the sound of Hope’s breathing, when everyone else troops in. Vanille is in the lead, a bundle of leafy greens in her arms, and Sazh is right behind her, balancing a half-dozen eggs. Snow brings up the rear, and he’s lugging what looks like the hindquarters of a wolf.

“Got a haul,” Snow says cheerfully, looking over towards the bed. “How’s the kid? Upgraded him to a bed?”

“Something like that,” Lightning says. Fang snorts, mutters something that sounds unkind. Lightning rolls her eyes, moving over so Vanille can sit between them. “Don’t wake him up; he’s upset.”

“Upset? Why?” Sazh has crouched on Lightning’s other side, and he’s holding out his hands, muttering, “Take some before they fall.” Lightning takes two of the eggs, brown and speckled with blue, and sets them to the side. Takes another one, rolls it between her hands.

“He just is,” she says evasively, cupping the egg in her hands. It is small, fits perfectly between her palms. She wonders how thin the shell is, how easily she could crush it. Then wonders if she should crack it into the stew.

“We had to check something,” Fang says, a great deal less evasive. Lightning breathes in, stares at her, and Fang lifts an eyebrow back. “But now we know he can be in sunlight.”

It is painfully silent for a moment, then Snow says, loud and furious, “What did you _do_?”

“Don’t yell,” Lightning snaps, “you’ll wake him up--” Snow grabs her wrist, drags her to her feet, and she lifts her hand to punch him. Stops, because the egg is still in her hand. He turns on his heel, still holding her hand, and storms for the door. Lightning follows him, stumbling on one step, then pushing Snow’s shoulder to get him moving faster. When they’ve clattered down the metal stairs, she stops, ripping her wrist from him.

“What did you do, Lightning?” Snow asks, voice too loud and too slow. “Did you just-- God, did you just throw him into the sunlight?”

“Oh shut _up_ ,” she screams, and she throws the egg at him. He ducks, and her aim is too wide, too wild: the egg flies over his head, shatters on the ground behind him. Shell and yolk splatter across the ground, shining wetly in the light from the moon and stars and Cocoon above. She stares at the yolk, and feels something like tears in the back of her throat. It has been a long, long time since she cried, but she is so exhausted, and when she thinks that it’s only been a week since her birthday, she wants to scream.

“You’re such an idiot, you don’t ever-- This is _reality_ , Snow, and you don’t ever-- We had to do it, and we knew that the rest of you wouldn’t _open up your eyes_.” Her voice, she knows, is getting louder, and shriller. She can’t remember the last time she screamed like this, either. Probably at Serah, over something stupid; a lost earring, or a stained sweater. She can’t remember getting so mad over something so painfully, stupidly, impossibly real. Something like making a kid reach out and touch the sunlight. But it’s real, it has to be real, and if she can convince Snow, then she can convince herself, too. “This is _reality_.”

Snow is half-turned away from her, looking towards the shattered egg, and he’s not saying anything. Small mercies, she thinks, or maybe no mercy at all. She takes a breath, holds it so it won’t come out a sob. When she rubs the back of her hand against her forehead, then pinches the arch of her nose, she feels the pricks of tears in the corners of her eyes.

“This is so _stupid_ ,” she hisses, and when Snow still doesn’t say anything, or turn to look at her, she spins around and stalks back up the stairs.

Inside, Hope is still lying on the bunk, but his breath is heavy and tight now; he’s awake. Fang, Vanille, and Sazh are still sitting in the middle of the floor, circled around the pot of stew, and they all look at her when she comes in, stare without shame.

“ _What_?” she snaps, and Vanille looks away, a deep blush rising on her face. Fang looks away, too, slower than Vanille. Sazh just shrugs, sinking back on his hands.

“Nothin’, just wondering if you wanted to eat with us,” he says, like a peacemaker, and Lightning has to take a moment to unclench her hands, to close her eyes and count to ten and not _scream_ at everyone and everything, because for once, hitting the nearest monster isn’t making things better, because for once, the nearest monster isn’t really a monster, but a little boy.

“Fine,” she says, when the pricks in her eyes are gone, and her cheeks aren’t feeling so hot. Sazh smiles at her then, and scoots over, patting the floor next to him.

“Sit on down, lady.”

x

Snow avoids her the next day, and Vanille seems even more gun-shy than the day before. Fang ignores her with a professional ease that’s painful. The only one who doesn’t pointedly look away from her whenever she catches his eye is Sazh and, when he finally wakes up again, Hope.

It’s nearly noon when Hope finally stirs, with a quick in-taken breath that seems synonymous with nightmares. Lightning and Sazh are playing cards with a partial deck they found in another building, and they pause, look over as Hope sits up.

“What time is it?” Hope asks. Lightning pulls a card, then tosses it to the center, follows it with a card from her hand.

“Nearly noon,” Sazh says, and he picks up the card Lightning tossed, then pulls one from the pile. “Want breakfast?”

“No-o.” Hope drags the word out as he stumbles over to them. He stands next to them, looking down at the card pile for a moment. “I’m not really hungry. What-- What are you playing?”

“Buncle. Pull in if you want.”

Hope hesitates, then sits down, close enough that his knee is pressed against Lightning’s thigh. Lightning stares down at her cards, then glances over, and winces. He looks dreadful, really. There are bruises around his eyes, dark and angry looking, and his lips are pale. His hand shakes when he reaches out to grab a card, and he fumbles, jostling the deck. Lightning licks her own lips, her mouth suddenly dry.

“Hope,” she says, and blinks when he looks at her, his eyes fever-bright. “You look--” _like death warmed over_ “--tired. Did you sleep enough?”

“Yeah, I did. Just--” Hope hesitates as he pairs off two of his cards, tosses them on the discard pile. “Just sleepy. I think, maybe, the sun...” He trails off, staring down at his cards. Lightning looks down at her own, not sure what to say.

Sazh, apparently, doesn’t have that problem, because he says, “Lightning, it’s your turn,” then turns to Hope and says, “It’s cool, I was the same way when I was a teenager. Lazy as hell. Drove my mom to distraction.”

“I-- Oh.” Hope looks as incredulous as Lightning feels, but she thinks she can see a little relief in his face, too. Like just that, Sazh’s little off-handed comment, can right all the wrongs that Lightning and Snow haven’t been able to mend.

Lightning swallows back a smile, and tries not to roll her eyes, and tells herself she feels grateful as she pulls a card.

Sazh slaughters them in the game and laughs about it, says something about the kids being years too early if they think they can bluff him. Lightning can’t fault him, because she’s crap at cards, always has been. Serah’s loads better, and if Serah was here-- But Serah isn’t, so Lightning waves off a second game, leaning back on her hands. The sun coming through the window is warm, and Hope is still sitting beside her, and if this is as good as it can get, she’ll take it.

“I’m not mad, you know,” Hope says suddenly, when Sazh has gone off to try to find replacements for the cards missing in their deck. The suddenness of it is a little startling, but the words aren’t, not really. Lightning can still remember being young, and angry, and hurt; and she’s pretty sure Hope gets a little more leeway this week, because there is something _off_ about him, something _wrong_ that says things have changed.

“I know,” she says. She leans a little on her right arm, just enough so she can bump Hope’s shoulder with hers. “Even if you were, it’d be okay.”

“But,” Hope says stubbornly, “I don’t _want_ to be.”

“Okay.” Lightning stretches out her legs, fixes her skirt a little, then leans back on her hands again. “Okay, then. You’re not mad.”

“Okay.” Hope stretches his legs out, too, next to hers. Sitting side-by-side, his feet don’t quite meet her calves. She wonders how long it will take him to be as tall as her; if he’ll ever be any taller than he is now. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

She stares at their shoes for a long time, then the rivets in the metal floor. It’s not very comfortable, and the village is too quiet. She’s warm, though, and she can hear Snow and Fang bickering from down near the lake, their voices carrying over the streets of crystal. Sleepiness is stealing over her, and when she turns and looks at Hope, she can only say, very quietly, and a little sadly, “Your skin is burning.”

He stays in the shade the rest of the afternoon, his skin pink and tender looking. Lightning hovers around him, realizes she’s hovering, and tries to drag herself outside. Lasts for five minutes, maybe six, before she climbs the stairs again, and hovers over Hope. He’s starting to look frustrated, and she’s starting to feel frustrated.

“It’s fine,” he says sharply, when she reaches out to touch his cheek. She ignores him, lays a finger against his skin. It’s hot against her skin, but it doesn’t look like it’ll blister.

“Serah gets sunburns, too,” she says thoughtlessly. “Hers are usually worse, though. She forgets that she burns so easily.”

Hope is quiet for a long time. When he does talk, his jaw moves beneath her finger. “Do you think, if I stood in the sun long enough, I’d burn?”

She thinks about it. Imagines him standing in the sunlight, head tilted back so he can look up at Cocoon, where his mother is dead and his father is missing. Thinks about how long it’d probably take, hours and hours of the sun beating down on him, before he’d erupt. And then she thinks about the aftermath, about greasy ashes smeared on the ground, maybe a few fragments left. Teeth, bones. Maybe a little hair.

“Maybe,” she says, “but it’d take a very long time.”

Hope nods, then stops. Lifts his head and looks at her. “Do you think,” he asks, “everything is different now?”

“Maybe,” she says again, so many maybes, “but it doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of you.”

“‘kay,” he says, simple and trusting, and when he lets his head fall forward onto her shoulder, she pulls him close, and listens for his slow, steady heartbeat.


	2. Chapter 2

Two days later, she grabs Snow and Fang, pulls them into the next room. Vanille follows them, hesitating in the doorway, and when Lightning says, “Come on,” she rushes over, stands a little behind Fang.

“I,” Lightning says. Thinks about it, tries it again. “I’m taking Hope back to Cocoon.”

Fang doesn’t say anything, but Snow erupts. “What are you talking about? Take him back to Cocoon? Are you crazy?”

“I’m taking him back,” Lightning repeats, and Snow yells, “That’s exactly what Dysley wants!”

Snow closes his eyes, breathing hard, and Lightning watches him. When he looks at her again, his lower jaw is shoved out, a picture of stubbornness. “If you go back, you’re walking right into his hands.”

“I don’t care,” Lightning says.

“Lightning,” he snaps, “he’ll use you to destroy Cocoon.”

Snow is already standing right in front of Lightning, trying to tower over her. She steps forward, slams her hands into his chest. Pushes him back hard, and when he staggers but stays upright, she pushes him harder.

“ _Listen_ to me,” she snarls. “I. Don’t. Care.” Snow’s back is against the wall, and she can’t push him any further. She settles for punching his shoulder, leaves her fist there. She can feel his body move as he breathes. “Hope’s dying, and I’m going to take him back and fix things.”

“What are you even _talking_ about?!”

“What am I--” Lightning tightens her fist, feels her knuckles grind against the joint of Snow’s shoulder. He winces, and she tightens her fist again. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to say, or how she’s supposed to say it; how to explain that she can see Hope’s ribs, even through Snow’s stupid shirt that he’s still borrowing. Or that his wrists look so small, or that his face looks thinner now. Or that his lips are white now, and that when he’s half-asleep, he’ll say, _I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty_ , like it’s something Lightning can fix. She doesn’t know what to say, because there are too many things _to_ say, and so she looks at Vanille and Vanille looks away.

“He’s starving to death,” Vanille says. She’s looking at the floor, avoiding all of their eyes. “You can tell, if you look at him. He looks--” She looks up at Fang, reaches out and touches Fang’s elbow with her fingers. “You remember, Fang?”

Lightning looks at Vanille’s fingers on Fang’s arm, watches Vanille pull away. When Snow moves, sliding sideways along the wall to get away from Lightning’s fist, Lightning looks back at him.

“He’s getting worse. He hasn’t been able to keep any food down, and now he can’t keep down water.” Lightning licks her lips, then presses her bottom lip against her teeth. “If I take him to Cocoon--”

“You’ll feed him humans?” Fang asks. Lightning shrugs, says, “If it’ll work.”

“Does he know what you’re planning to do?” Snow grabs Lightning’s wrist, lets go when Lightning starts to pull away. “Lightning. Does he know what you’re planning to do?”

“Of course not,” she hisses. “What do you think I could say? He wouldn’t go-- He wouldn’t do _anything_. He’d be happy to sit here and wait to die, and you would _let him_ \--”

“That’s not fair,” Snow says, so she says, “Then help me.”

Snow leaves then, pushes past Fang and Vanille with probably more force than he needs. Lightning can hear him stomping through the next room, then clattering down the stairs. “Idiot,” she says, so she won’t cry out of frustration, “idiot brat.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Vanille says before Lightning can take two steps toward the door. “I’m going with you, so I’ll talk to him.” 

“Fine,” Lightning says, and she watches Vanille run out of the room, chasing after Snow. She stares at the door for a few more minutes, then looks at Fang. Fang is looking back at her, arms crossed and chin lifted high, and Lightning feels her shoulders begin to rise. “And you?” she asks, lifting her chin in turn.

“I go where Vanille goes. You know that.” Fang smiles a little, and it’s crooked, higher on the left side of her face. “What you’re doing, I think it’s good. I’d do the same thing for Vanille.”

“I know,” Lightning says.

“She would hate me for it, though.”

Again, Lightning says, “I know.”

“He’ll hate you, too.”

Lightning licks her lips, feels a loose flap of skin. Bites it, feels it tear. There’s a little blood in her mouth, on the tip of her tongue. “It will be worth it,” she says, and tries to think that it’s true.

Snow comes back when Lightning is repacking the supplies with Fang. Snow stands next to them, looking down at them for a while, and Fang finally snorts, gets up and leaves. Lightning watches her leave the building, probably to find Vanille; a bit of her wants to follow.

“He’s really dying,” Snow says. Lightning looks at him, follows his gaze. Watches Hope sleep on a bunk, the way he’s been sleeping almost all day; he had slept most of yesterday, too, and had only looked worse when she had made him get up for a dinner that left him retching and spitting. He will probably look even worse tonight, and even worse tomorrow. She wonders how many tomorrows he can look worse for.

“Yeah,” Lightning says, then adds, “hopefully.” When Snow kicks her leg, she shifts away, says, “His brand is still there. I think-- It looks like it’s opening.”

“If he becomes a Cieth...” Snow takes a few steps toward Hope, then stops. Moves back next to Lightning, close enough that she can feel his hand just above her neck.

“I don’t know what will happen if he turns Cieth. Fang said she’s never really heard of anything--” Lightning yanks the last strap of her pack closed; she pulls too hard and the strap snaps back, whipping across her hand. It hurts. “Anything like this happening before.”

Snow looks as frightened as she feels. He doesn’t run away, though. Just looks at Hope for a long time, then hunkers down next to Lightning, his elbows propped on his knees, hands grazing the floor. “Have you talked to Sazh yet?”

“Of course.” Lightning licks her lips, presses her bottom lip against her teeth. There’s still the tang of blood in her mouth, from when she tore the skin off her lip, and her lip feels swollen and tender. “We talked about it last night. He noticed--” she jerks a thumb back towards Hope, but keeps her head bowed so she doesn’t have to see him. “Yesterday, I think.”

“And he’s coming?”

Lightning nods quickly, feels a little lightheaded. “Yeah, he’s coming.”

“I can--” Snow clears his throat loudly, breathes, clears it again. “I can tell Hope, if you want me to.”

It takes Snow a long time to wake Hope up-- long enough that Lightning makes it over, too, standing just behind Snow. She rests her hands on her hips because it feels too awkward to let her arms hang loose. Her palms are slick with sweat, and they slide off her hips; she fists her hands, rests her fists on her hips, and waits for Snow to wake Hope up.

When Hope finally drags himself upwards, rubbing his eyes and wincing against the sunlight, he looks very, very normal; very, very human; like a very sick kid. His lips have faded to the same color as his face, and they’re chapped. The circles beneath his eyes are bigger and darker, and his eyes are more fever-bright than they were last night.

“Hey, Hope,” Snow says, soft and gentle. As soft and gentle as Lightning has ever heard him talk, the late nights he sat with Serah on the couch, when Lightning stayed up late in the kitchen, filling out reports and eavesdropping, because she was never able to make Serah laugh like that. “You awake?”

Hope nods slowly, cants dangerously to the side. Snow jerks forward, grabs Hope before Hope can careen too far to the side, and Lightning edges closer, fists tighter on her hips. When Hope finally shakes Snow off, he’s leaning against the wall, his head propped against the post of the bunkbed. 

“I’m fine,” Hope lies, “just tired.”

“I know,” Snow says, and Snow looks back at Lightning, pursing his lips. Lightning looks back at him, looks away. Shifts a little, and waits for Snow to get on with it. “Hope, you’re pretty sick.”

“I’m _not_ ,” Hope says, “I’m just tired--” and Snow interrupts, voice rising a little. More than Lightning ever heard his voice rise with Serah. 

“You’re sick, Hope. You lost-- You lost a lot of blood, and you’re in pretty bad shape right now. If you got an, an infection, or something, then. We think it’s best if we go back to Cocoon for a while. Just a. Just a while.”

“Because of people-- Because _people_ are there.” Hope is surging up on the bed and the smell of ozone is snapping through the air like the smell of fear. The hair on the back of Lightning’s neck is rising, and the hair on her arms, too. “I don’t want to-- I’m _not_. I’m not what you--” Hope breathes in, a long, shuddering breath, and the hair on Lightning’s arms rises higher. “Not what you think.”

Snow does soothing better than Lightning; he’s moved to sitting on the bed, like Hope isn’t half a moment from throwing panicked magic through the room. Snow reaches out, pats the mattress next to him, and Lightning shuffles forward, perches on the edge. She can feel her tongue rising up in the back of her mouth, closing off her throat, and the ozone smell in the room is making her cringe.

“We don’t think you’re anything, Hope,” Snow says, and he reaches out, punches Hope’s knee. It’s insane, makes Lightning want to flinch and roll her eyes at the same time. She settles for closing her eyes, tucking her head down. Tries not to pull magic into the palms of her hands. “We just think, maybe a doctor or something. In case, you know.”

“Light?” Hope asks. Lightning opens her eyes, looks at the bend of Hope’s knee. She tries to blow her hair out of her eyes, hopes that her face looks calm enough. It must, because the ozone smell is starting to fade, and the tension of magic is lessening, just a little.

“I want you to come to Cocoon with me.” _Want_ , because that’s the word that always got Serah to break, to give in and do what Lightning needed her to do.

“Do you--” Hope moves, makes the springs of the bed squeal. “You won’t make me do anything I don’t want to? You promise?”

“I promise,” she lies, and Snow shoves his knee against hers, looks at her like she’s a monster. She feels like one, just a little. “Nothing you don’t want.”

“I don’t believe you,” Hope says, but he takes her hand when she holds it up, lets her lead him from the bed. It’s enough for her: the bad guy’s role always needs more players.

They leave just before dusk, and no one says it’s because of Hope, that Hope’s skin burns too quickly, too easily. Hope drags behind them, slow and a little clumsy, and Lightning doesn’t really know what to do. Doesn’t know if she should hang back with him, or if she should ignore him. She settles for an uneasy medium, lagging back far enough that she’s in the middle of the group, walking next to Vanille and Fang. 

Vanille looks a little brighter, a little happier, and every step that takes Oerba further away makes her look a little lighter. Fang looks much the same, like something is falling from her shoulders with every two paces. Lightning wants to ask them, wants to know the name of every person they loved five hundred years before. She wants to know that there’s someone else who’s lost everything, and doesn’t know how to keep moving (but somehow, does so, one step after another). When she looks at them, though, she thinks that maybe it’s because they have each other, and Lightning had that; after her parents, she had Serah, and Serah had her. Now Serah has Snow, and Lightning is still stuck dragging behind, feeling stupid and immature and like such a _brat_ some times.

“It’s not too bad,” Fang says suddenly, and Lightning looks from her to Vanille, waits for Vanille to respond. Only realizes when Vanille looks back at her that Fang was talking to _her_.

“What isn’t?” she asks dumbly, and Fang says, “Everything. Hope, Oerba. It’ll all turn out.”

Lightning wants to believe it-- desperately, desperately wants to believe it. There is so much that she wants to believe-- that Hope will be okay, that Cocoon will stay in the sky. That Serah, beautiful, silly, wonderful Serah, will wake up one day.

When she hears Serah’s laughter, she feels the world fall out from under her feet. 

Serah looks like-- like _her_. Like beautiful, silly, wonderful Serah. Serah, Serah, Serah-- she looks just like she always did, always will, and she is all Lightning has (and all Lightning has ever wanted, just her baby sister, happy and there and _alive_ ). Lightning wants to hug her, kiss her, touch her and know that she’s _real_. Lightning’s feet, though, won’t move, and her knees feel as though she is shaking. She never knew that happiness could be so terrifying.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Serah says, and her hands are behind her back, she’s looking down like she’s trying to keep a secret (beautiful Serah, silly Serah, wonderful, wonderful, _wonderful_ Serah). She never could though, not when they were kids, and not now. She looks up, smiles at them all, and Lightning stumbles forward a few steps, until she’s shoulder to shoulder with Snow.

“Serah,” Snow says, and Lightning wants to repeat it after him, wants to cry. Her mouth is dry, her throat hurts. 

“I thought,” Serah says, twisting her foot along the ground, such a kid, “that you wouldn’t come back to Cocoon. I thought that, maybe, you didn’t understand.”

Lightning is aware of too many things. The way Serah is tracing patterns on the ground with her toe, the way Snow is trembling beside her. Fang and Vanille and Sazh, clustered beside them. Hope, standing right behind her like he’s hiding. The sun is sinking behind Serah, throwing a halo over her hair. Somewhere, a bird is screaming. There is too much, and not enough, and not all the screaming of the world could drown out Serah’s next words.

“I thought you wouldn’t destroy Cocoon.”

Beautiful, silly, wonderful Serah. Lightning closes her eyes, feels something rise in the back of her throat. She can’t move, can’t speak-- can’t even open her eyes, because she doesn’t want to see Serah’s face, doesn’t want to see Serah trace stupid pictures in the ground crystal.

“What are you talking about?” Snow asks, and Lightning feels him step away from her, moving towards Serah. “We’re trying to save Cocoon.”

“Save Cocoon?” Serah laughs, a pretty little laugh, and it sounds cold. Lightning bites back a whimper, and listens to her baby sister. Serah’s voice sounds a thousand times too loud. “I brought you together so you could destroy Cocoon. You understand, don’t you, Snow? You have to do it to save everyone.”

“Serah--”

“You promised,” Serah’s little voice says, like it used to say late at night, when Lightning was in the kitchen and she could hear Serah in the living room, talking to that stupid boyfriend Lightning could never approve of, “that you’d be my hero. Snow, you promised.”

“ _Stop it_.” Lightning surprises herself, flinches back as she says it. The words feel like pieces of glass in her throat, and she thinks she may bleed. She breathes in, a sharp breath that nearly chokes her, and says again as she opens her eyes, “Stop it, Serah.”

Serah’s face looks hurt, like it’s about to crumple. Her mouth opens, her eyes widen, and she holds out her hands, like every time they had a stupid fight over a stupid thing (sweaters and earrings and whose turn it was to do the dishes).

“Lightning,” she says, like an apology or a plea, “you can’t hurt me. You love me too much.”

And it’s true, truer than anything else that Lightning knows. She would do anything-- _will_ do anything-- to keep Serah from turning and walking away. To keep Serah from crumpling into the crystal dust that covers Oerba. Lightning can feel her knees shaking, from fear or pain or a deep, aching love, and she tightens her hands into fists, lifts her chin.

“I don’t understand,” she says, a blast to all of her pride, and Serah smiles brightly at her, says, “You never do, Claire.”

And then Serah’s face _does_ crumple, melting into Dysley’s. A trick, all a stupid trick, and Lightning wants to bury her face into her hands and sob, wants to tear Dysley’s face from his skull, wants to watch the entire fucking world burn so that everyone can feel as much fucking _pain_ as she has in the last five minutes (and five days, and five years, ever since she had to walk home from the hospital alone).

“Dysley,” Hope breathes behind her, and Lightning tightens her fists, feels the tension lance through her bones. She starts to take a step forward, reaching back for her sword, and then Hope grabs her hand, twists her fingers in with his until they’re about to break. Lightning stops, resting on the ball of one foot, the heel of the other, and twists her fingers back with Hope’s.

“You don’t yet understand,” Dysley says, lifting his hands, _grandstanding_ , “but Providence will lead you back to Cocoon, and to Orphan.”

Hope’s hand is sweating in hers, and he’s moved close enough that she can feel his chest against her back. When he whispers, she can just hear his words.

“I can fight,” he says, and she knows what he means: he can die for her; he _will_ die for her; for her, and Vanille, and Fang, and Snow, and Sazh. And for Serah, and Cocoon, and for his mother and father. For whatever will save their fucked up little world, spinning in a big empty sky.

She squeezes Hope’s hand tighter, hears him make a sound of pain, and says, “It’s not Providence. We’re going back for ourselves, not for you.”

Dysley laughs, slow and dry, like the old men who play chess in the parks. Check, and mate. “Every step serves its purpose. The l’Cie and the Calvary, they will each serve their purposes. Orphan is waiting for its saviors.”

Dysley disappears like pyreflies and when Lightning reaches out, tries to grab one, it burns in her fist, pops out of existence with a flash of light that sneaks through the gaps between her fingers. She opens her hand, turns it over; rubs her thumb at the blistering burns at the base of her fingers. When Hope lets go of her other hand, moves around to face her, she rubs at the blisters a little harder, doesn’t look up.

“What will you do?” he asks, and he takes her hand, holds it flat and steady in his. He touches the blisters with his fingers, pours a cure into her skin. Lightning breathes through her mouth, tastes the tang of magic on the air, and pulls her hand back.

“I’m still taking you to Cocoon. It doesn’t matter what Dysley said.” 

Hope frowns at her, looks like he’s about to argue, so she grabs his shoulder, grips at the fragile skin and bones beneath the stupid, borrowed shirt. “I’m taking you,” she says, “to Cocoon. I’m going to fix things.”

She’s not really an idealist-- she left that for Serah years ago. She knows the world never goes how she wants it to-- she knows that in the end, parents die and kids get lost and sometimes, the hero loses his way, and never saves the day. She knows that it’s all pretty much a bitch, and she knows that sometimes, there’s not much to get out of bed for. But Hope’s bones are fragile, feel like the bones of the birds that nest in the grassy downs of Cocoon ( _snap its neck with a twist of your wrist_ , one of her instructors had taught her, and her thumb is resting by Hope’s neck, where she can see the dream of his pulse), and sometimes, she wishes she could be like Serah. Hope a little more, pray a little more; find the good guys, and cheer them on (and maybe, just maybe, be one of the good guys, not the soldier but the hero).

Hope hesitates, so she shoves his shoulder, pushing him back into Snow. Snow catches him with a grunt, says, “What the hell, Lightning?”

“We’re going,” she says, action in the reaction, and she turns to Sazh, asks him, “You think you can get us to Cocoon?”

“Lady,” he says, a cocky grin on his face, the left half of his smile higher than the right, “get me an airship, and I can get you anywhere you want.”

x

They find an airship in the water of the lake, covered with gray moss. It’s fully dark by the time Fang and Lightning are climbing over the body of the airship, scraping chunks of the moss off with their fingernails. The moss feels like hair, or fur, and it tickles the palms of Lightning’s hands. She pushes bunch after bunch off the roof of the airship, and each bunch splashes into the water below, sends ripples that glint with Cocoon’s light. 

Sazh has already crawled into the cockpit, and Lightning can hear him muttering to himself, asking himself, or no-one, where this or that gauge are, and what the hell this knob is for. When Lightning shoves an armful of moss off the edge of the roof, she finds herself looking in the windshield, and Sazh is grinning up at her, giving her a thumbs up.

“Got it,” he leans out of the window to yell up at her, like she’s not _right there_. “This girlie will fly like a bird.”

“That’s the idea,” Lightning says back dryly, and she doesn’t really _aim_ , but still grins when the next bunch of moss lands on Sazh, catching in his hair, hanging across his shoulders. He scowls up at her, rolls his eyes, and crawls back into the cockpit to mutter to himself. Lightning watches him through the windshield, then looks for Hope.

He’s sitting on the shore, and Vanille and Snow are hovering over him, looking like chocobos hovering over a nest. Vanille keeps moving closer and closer, reaching out like she wants to touch him, then she skitters back; moves forward, and back, over and over. It looks like a warped dance, and Lightning remembers the aching pain of flirting in middle school. She licks her lips, then clears her throat. Yells awkwardly over the water, “We’re ready to go--”

Her throat is too dry, though, and her voice cracks, fades away over the water. She slides off the plane, splashing up to her thighs in the water, and starts wading toward the shore. Lightning is two, maybe three yards from the airship, when Fang yells, loud enough for everyone on the beach to hear. “Vanille! Come on--”

Vanille passes Lightning in the water, and she smiles at Lightning. Her fingertips are trailing in the water, a pathway of ripples leading back to the shore, and Lightning looks at them, then at the edges of Vanille’s skirt, where the water is beading on the fur.

“Are you ready?” she asks Vanille, and Vanille’s fingers dip further into the water, the ripples spreading out from her wrists.

“I’m ready,” she says. She reaches out, touches Lightning’s wrist with her wet fingers. “Are you?”

“Yeah.” Lightning turns, watches Vanille wade the rest of the way to the airship. She’s watching Fang lean down to pull Vanille up to the cockpit when Snow comes to stand beside her, bumps his shoulder against hers.

“Hey, Sis,” Snow says, and Lightning bites her tongue, counts to three before she says, as mildly as she can, “Don’t call me that.”

“Yeah, sure,” Snow says easily, and then he says to his other side, “You ready, Hope?”

“I guess,” Hope says. Lightning leans forward to look around Snow; Hope is looking toward the airship, and his face is scrunched up like he’s upset, or thinking about something. Snow must notice, too, because he punches Lightning’s shoulder with one hand, and ruffles Hope’s hair with the other.

“Take your time,” he says, and then he _leaves them there_ , Lightning standing awkwardly in the water, Hope standing beside her. Lightning looks at Hope, then looks away. Looks back, and asks, “Hope?”

“I think,” Hope blurts out as soon as she says his name; his face is pale, but there are red splotches on his cheeks. “I think-- I mean. Vanille. I think Vanille...” he trails off, looking down at the water.

She tries to wait patiently, but he’s not saying anything, and she can hear the whirr as the airship’s engines turn over and over. Finally, she reaches out, touches Hope’s wrist the same way Vanille had touched hers, and Hope looks up at her, says, “She doesn’t touch me anymore.”

“She doesn’t,” Hope says, “pull me along, or-- or hug me, or even. She doesn’t touch me. Not like she used to. I mean. I think.” Hope turns his wrist in Lightning’s hand, twists until he’s grabbing her fingers, and he squeezes hard, and Lightning squeezes back. “I think she’s scared of me, or, or hates me, or.”

He’s still staring at the water, and his shoulders are rising and falling madly; when he takes in a gasping breath, Lightning can only think, _please, god, don’t let him start crying_.

“I think,” she says very slowly, completely at a lost-- no clue, no idea, because what do you say to little boys who become monsters, “that she’s scared you’re angry with her.” Hope swallows loudly, a wet, crying sound, and Lightning adds, “She looks at you. A lot. And she smiles.”

“ _I don’t_ ,” Hope cries, _wails_ , and Lightning grabs him, pulls him in for the tightest hug she can manage. It always helped with Serah, when Serah would be hysterical and crying from a bad day at school or a shitty boyfriend or just not having parents; maybe, she thinks, it will help with Hope, who is thin and brittle in her arms.

“She doesn’t,” Lightning says against the top of Hope’s head, his hair tickling her nose, sticking to her lips, “hate you. None of us hate you. We would never-- I would never hate you. Never.”

It’s so much more painful than it was at Palumpolum, and she holds him so much tighter than she had then; she holds him as tight as she wishes she could hold Serah. Hope shakes in her arms, and she can feel her jacket over her breast soak through with his tears. It’s so stupid, and he’s such a _kid_ , and she awkwardly kisses the top of his head, says, “I’ll still-- I’ll take care of you.”

Hope scrubs his eyes red, then dunks his head in the water before he goes back to the airship with her. It’s still pretty obvious he was crying-- his eyes are red and puffy, his nose is still running, and when he talks, his voice has that stuffed, heady sound of the mourning. Hope mumbles something that Lightning can’t really get, and then he squeezes into the back of the cockpit, shoving himself into the corner. Lightning shoves herself back with him, nudging Snow out of the way. Then Vanille comes, and cramps herself in with them, her hip and breast and shoulder pressed up against Lightning’s side.

“It’s tight,” Vanille says to the cockpit at large, and Hope makes a wet-sounding laugh on Lightning’s other side. Lightning sighs, feels her body press against Hope and Vanille both.

“As long as we don’t crash,” she says. Sazh snorts from the pilot’s seat, and Snow and Fang, folded up beside and behind Sazh, give Lightning a look she can’t understand.

“It’ll be fine,” Vanille says, their eternal optimist with her ten thousand tears, and Hope says after her, in his tear-soaked voice, “Yeah.”

And somehow, it almost is. The airship shakes, shudders, feels like it’s falling apart around them, but it holds together, god only knows how. The turbulence throws them around the tiny cockpit like dolls, bruised and scraped, blood trickling from their lips and their elbows. Hope makes terrible sounds, like a mad dog, and tries to dig himself into the corner, away from them (and, Lightning thinks, the pit of her stomach filling with sickness and fear, their blood). Lightning tries to hold herself up off Hope, her arms braced against the cockpit’s walls, and Vanille drips cures through the cockpit, tries to wipe off her own blood onto the edge of her belted sash.

“Just a bit-- Hope, we’re almost,” Lightning says, and Hope makes the same mad-dog sound, shoving his face against his knees, his hands locked over the back of his head. Lightning licks away the blood on her lip, tastes the tang of metal and salt, and says, “ _Sazh_.”

“I’m _trying_ ,” Sazh snaps back, his voice tense and angry-sounding. Then the airship spins madly in the air, lifting on a-- a _swell_ , or whatever the fuck there can be in the air that can make them spin like this. Sazh curses, then the airship levels out, stops spinning. Lightning licks more blood from her lip, swallows down the taste of it, and the taste of her rising nausea.

“Dysley,” Fang says darkly from where she’s pinned under Snow’s heavy weight, thrown by the last airswell, “could have at least given us a good ship.”

Snow chuckles, and even Lightning can’t stop herself from smiling, just a bit. Hope’s hands, still locked over his head, loosen a little, and Lightning watches the back of his head, the knob at the nape of his neck.

“It’ll be okay,” she says, to all of them, and to herself, and it almost is. The cockpit is small and painful, and the airship is thrown through the air like a toy-- but it holds together, god knows how. And with each swell, they rise higher in the air, and Cocoon grows larger in lunges, closer and closer, until Sazh is cursing and trying to aim the airship for the gaping hole in Cocoon’s shell, left from the war centuries ago.

“We’re in,” Sazh says as he spins the airship through the hole, and then a wing snaps off, caught on the edge of Cocoon, or a tree, or the just the anger of the fal’Cie; Lightning sees it spin away past the moss-stained window, and then Snow yells, “Brace!”

She grabs Hope, wraps her arms around him, then thrusts her shoulder against the wall, digging the toes of her shoes into the floor, trying to lock herself, and Hope with her, between the wall and floor. Then the world explodes.

When she comes to, she’s lying on her back, and she feels hungover, like she drank too much, smoked too much. She tries to open her eyes-- sticky and gummy, her eyelids stick together like her eyelashes were braided together. She tries again, then lifts her hand, tries to rub her eyes. She can feel something, wet and sticky, coat her palm, and she thinks, _Ah, blood_ \--

“ _Don’t_ ,” a very strained voice says. “Don’t move.”

The words sound like they’re coming through a cloud, and she tries to swallow; feels her tongue, thick and heavy, in her mouth. Her head is throbbing, feels thick with pain and confusion, and she’s trying to place the voice when she feels something like wet light pour over her face.

Her face must change, because the very strained voice says, “It’s a cure. You-- there’s a lot of blood.”

“Vanille?” Lightning asks, and the voice, Vanille’s voice, says, “There’s just one more--”

The cure slides down Lightning’s face, trickles down her neck like water; then she can feel something soft wipe at her face, like thin cotton. Lightning swallows down the taste of blood in her throat, then tenses when Vanille wipes blood from Lightning’s eyes. Then Vanille’s fingers touch Lightning’s face, above and below her eyes, and Lightning takes in a sharp breath and holds it. Then curses, softly, when Vanille yanks Lightning’s eyes open, tearing the clotted blood on Lightning’s eyelashes.

“Sorry,” Vanille says, her voice still tight; her face is swimming in Lightning’s eyes, like through tears (and if she’s crying, over _this_ , she will be so _humiliated_ ). “There’s no water, and with the cures--”

“It’s fine,” Lightning says through grit and blood and the threat of pained tears. She shuts her eyes tight, then opens them as wide as she can. Vanille is still swimming in her eyes, fuzzy and liquid. “Where’s-- Where’s Hope?”

“He’s sitting with Fang,” Vanille says very carefully, and her face swims a little slower now, turns a little more clear. “It was-- Head wounds,” she says, “bleed a lot.”

And when Lightning can really _see_ Vanille’s face, white and tense and _scared_ , she wonders what she missed. If _sitting with Fang_ really means _wrestled away_. If _a lot of blood_ really means _he was hungry_.

“Okay,” she says, slowly, and she reaches out, touches Vanille’s knee, pats it like she used to pat Serah’s. Like that will show Vanille that she understands everything Vanille’s not saying. “Thank you.”

Vanille smiles, the same bright, brittle smile as always, and says, “Let’s go, then.”

The blood loss has made Lightning woozy-- she staggers as soon as she tries to get up, and falls to a knee. She presses her forehead against her leg and tries to breathe around the red roar in her eyes and her eyes and her _head_. Vanille comes up behind her, puts her small hands on Lightning’s shoulders, thumbs on either side of Lightning’s neck.

“A head wound?” Lightning asks when she lifts her head, blinking; there’s still blood on her eyelashes, still trying to clot together and blind her. Vanille’s fingers drum on Lightning’s shoulders, middle and first fingers beating out on Lightning’s collarbone, thumbs still against Lightning’s neck.

“They bleed a lot,” Vanille says in a bright voice, and Lightning rolls her eyes to herself, says, “Right.”

The third time’s the charm, and Lightning makes it upright; the roar in her head is diminishing, and her body doesn’t stagger too far to the left when she takes a step forward. Vanille lets go of Lightning’s shoulders, and stands beside Lightning instead, pointing into the trees and saying, “they went that way.”

The trees were probably a city four hundred years ago. There are the cracked remains of pavement beneath the moss and roots, and if Lightning squints, she can see crumbling buildings between the trees. An town, probably, before there was a Hanging Edge. Abandoned, forgotten, and how lucky for them. Lightning takes each step high, trying not to trip over roots and cracked pavement, and Vanille winds them through the trees, following some invisible path.

It is a very long walk, and Lightning wonders, a pit in her stomach, how far away Fang had to take Hope.

Then she says, when she’s trying not to slip on the moss and split her head open again, “Hope thinks you’re scared of him.”

The look Vanille gives her is very wide-eyed, like the way Serah had looked when Lightning had told her what she really thought of Snow. Wide-eyed, and a little hurt, and like Lightning is missing something very big.

“I’m not,” Vanille says, and she grabs Lightning’s hand, her thin fingers squeezing Lightning’s hand painfully tight. “I’m not, I’m really not.”

“I know,” Lightning says, because Vanille is looking at Lightning like Lightning said she doesn’t trust her; like Lightning doesn’t know that Vanille sits by Hope’s side whenever Hope’s having a nightmare. “I know you’re not, but Hope thinks-- He says you don’t touch him anymore.”

“I _do_ ,” Vanille says, “it’s just that.” She squeezes Lightning’s hand harder, and looks away. Lightning really hopes Vanille’s not going to cry, because when Vanille cries, it’s the ugliest out of all of them; when Vanille cries, it’s the saddest out of all of them. “It’s hard. Sometimes. Because it’s my fault, you know?”

“Sure,” Lightning says, and Vanille snatches her hands back. Another mistake, Lightning thinks, and she says, “it’s hard for me, too. I was supposed to protect him.” And she thinks, angry and hurt and wanting to scream and cry like a child, _Like I was supposed to protect Serah_.

The rest of the walk is awkwardly silent; Vanille doesn’t touch her, doesn’t really look at her, and sometimes, Vanille’s breath sounds wet and sad. Lightning is feeling angry again, and she’s dizzy and swollen feeling. The world feels like cotton beneath her feet, and the moss is slippery underfoot. She stumbles and Vanille doesn’t say anything, doesn’t hold out a hand to hold Lightning up.

“Here,” Vanille finally says as they round a tree, a sharp end to the bitter walk. Lightning swallows, blinks her crusted eyes.

Hope is sitting in the dirt and moss, his head bowed between his shoulders. Sazh is sitting in front of him, tearing shreds of moss from the ground and holding them up for the chocobo chick in his hair, like the moss is greens. Fang is standing beside them both, one hand on her hip, the other hand holding her spear. Lightning blinks again, and rubs at her forehead, wincing when the fresh scabs catch on her skin. It stings.

“Don’t,” Vanille scolds her, “you’ll start bleeding again.”

That’s when Hope turns around; his mouth is puffy and his left cheek looks bruised. His eyes, she thinks, look a little wild.

“Light,” Hope says, and Lightning says, “Let’s go, then. Where’s Snow?”

“Trying to figure out where we are.” Sazh groans as he staggers upward, like an old man. Lightning wonders how sore and bruised he is; if he feels as old as he suddenly looks. “Could be on any side of Hanging Edge now.”

“We just need to get out of the trees,” Lightning says, and she looks up past the trees, to the sky beyond them, and to the cities beyond the sky; when she tips back her head, she feels her stomach rise to the back of her throat, and her eyes swim again. She swallows it all back, grits out through her teeth, "Then we can see where Eden is.”

“Are you,” Hope asks very hesitantly, a couple feet away from her, “all right?” He leans forward, like he’s going to take a step, and Fang leans forward at the same time, and the bangles at the head of her spear jangle. At the jangle, Hope’s face goes white and he leans back, turning half away and shoving his hands into his pockets.

Lightning scowls at nothing in particular; at everything and everyone. “I’m fine,” she says, at Hope and Fang both, and she flicks her hair back over her shoulder. It slides back, whispering against her neck. “Let’s go, then.”

She leads the way, because everyone else is just standing around, looking at her and at each other like the sheep on Gran Pulse. They run into Snow there, in the midst of all the trees, and Snow grins widely at them all, jerks his thumb back over his shoulder, the way from which he’d been coming.

“Found a town,” he says, “thattaway.”

“How big?” Lightning asks, and Snow’s grin widens.

“Not big,” he says. “Looks like it’s dying. There weren’t many civilians, looked like.”

That’s good; that’s very good. Lightning says as much, even says, “Good job,” and only rolls her eyes when Snow preens at the compliment. But a town of soldiers is what they need, because Lightning’s sure that if it was a civilian, a woman or a child, Hope would fight her even more on this.

“We’re just going to blow our way through?” Fang asks, and Lightning nods.

“Push through, and find a road. Follow it towards Eden. Maybe we can find something on the way, train or something.” She tries to push her hair back out of her face, but the blood is sticky-dry, and her hair just falls into her eyes again, awkward and uncomfortable and red in the edge of her sight. “Find some supplies, too.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Sazh says, and he reaches out, scruffles Hope’s hair before he pushes on through, taking point alongside Lightning. Lightning tries to step back, keep some distance, but Sazh just shoves in close, slinging an arm around her shoulder. 

“You need help with this?” Sazh asks, and Lightning bites back what she was going to say, and lets her shoulders sag under the weight of Sazh’s arm. Sazh’s arm just gets heavier, and he’s using his weight to push Lightning along, staggering through the trees like a weird, two-headed monster. “I figured, you’re planning to--” he jerks his chin up, then says, “With Hope, right?”

“Yeah,” Lightning says, because it’s one of those things you can’t miss; because she can feel herself buckling under something, whether it’s Sazh’s arm or the fact that, ten feet behind, Hope is following after her. “I thought that, maybe, a soldier...”

She trails off, and Sazh pulls her even closer with his arm; it’s awkward, so awkward. She can feel her breasts pressed up tight against the side of Sazh’s body, and the stubble on his chin and jaw scratch at the side of her face. His breath is hot on her neck. It is, she realizes, like hugging her father; she wonders if this is what being hugged by a man always feels like.

“You’re a good woman,” Sazh says, real soft, into the hair over Lightning’s ear. Then he lets go, and pushes past her, leading their little ragtag group. It is probably best, Lightning thinks, because her throat is burning and her eyes are swimming, and she can feel something painful welling inside her, like tears.

x

They erupt on the town like a storm, pouring in over the embankments loud and fast. Snow was right: the town is empty, little more than a military outpost, a crumbling relic from a nearly-forgotten past, staffed with nearly-forgotten soldiers. The first half-dozen soldiers are on lookout, and Vanille and Sazh take them down with magic flung from their palms and fingertips. Fang and Snow charge in behind the magic, human tanks with brittle laughter, and Lightning follows behind them, a hand on Hope’s back.

“I’m fine,” Hope says; he weaves, though, when he flings fire. Lightning keeps her hand on Hope’s back, where she can feel his ribs and the knobs of his spine. The frantic, bird-frail beat of his heart.

The last lookout collapses under a heavy blow from Fang, and Lightning pulls her hand away from Hope, fingertips dragging over the fabric of the borrowed shirt. She edges away, side-stepping, looking at the bodies.

One of the soldiers, a few feet away, is still breathing, raspy and high-pitched like the whine of a dog.

“There should be supplies in the shed,” she says in her sharpest voice, bossy and strict, and maybe it’s because she’s been dragging them all across Cocoon and Pulse for weeks now, on some quest to avenge her baby sister, but no one questions her, or tries to argue with her. Fang, though, gives her a sideways look, and Lightning has to lift her chin.

And Fang gets it, has to get it, because she says, “Vanille, go look for some potions.” And, like it’s an afterthought, she says, “and take Hope with you.”

Snow and Sazh follow fast enough, and as soon as Hope is through the door of the shed, Sazh hot on his heels, Lightning turns, says, “Help me?”

They drag the soldier back the way they came, to an overhanging lip of earth at the edge of the crumbled town. The earth is sliding down, and thick, gnarled roots are twisting through the overhang. Fang takes the soldier’s feet, and Lightning takes the soldier’s hands, and they hide him beneath the lip of earth, like a grave of roots and dry dirt.

“He’s still alive,” Fang says, wiping her hands on her hips. A streak of dirt smears across Fang’s thigh, across naked skin, and Lightning looks down at her own hands, dirty and flecked with the soldier’s blood. She wipes them on the back of her skirt.

“The stories,” she tries to explain. The ones she used to tell Serah, the ones she used to hear from classmates and friends. It sounds stupid, though, feels stupid. “The stories,” she repeats dumbly, “I didn’t know--”

“How will you?” Fang asks, and Lightning says, “I don’t know.”

They climb through the rubble of the town, following everyone else. When they catch up with the rest of the group, Lightning grabs Hope’s arm and drags him back a few feet. 

“We’ll catch up with you,” Lightning says to Snow and Fang, and Snow looks at her, then nods slowly. Fang doesn’t look at her, just reaches out and grabs Vanille’s hand. Hope tenses beside Lightning, starting to pull away, and she tightens her grip, pulls him closer. “Don’t go too fast.”

“Right,” Snow says, and Fang starts to walk away, pulling Vanille with her. Vanille looks back over her shoulder, first at Hope, then at Lightning, and Lightning stares back, waits for them all to go. 

When they’re all walking away, she turns and drags Hope with her, back through the rubble she had just clambered through. Hope’s breathing hard beside her, like he’s been running for miles, and she’s hoping he doesn’t hyperventilate on her, because she really _can’t deal with that_ right now. She looks around, then spots the soldier, crumpled beneath tbe overhanging ledge where she’d left him a few minutes ago. 

“Come on,” she says, pulling Hope, and Hope pulls back, just as hard.

“Light,” he says, “I don’t,” and she pulls _harder_ , hard enough that Hope starts to fall, scrambling to stay on his feet. She kicks out, swiping his feet from beneath him, and when he falls, she grabs him and drags him down with her, twisting so they’re pressed up against the ledge.

“Don’t,” she says, “fight me on this.” Hope’s body stiffens so she says, “ _Please_.”

He holds very still when she shifts, pulling him until he’s sitting between her legs, leaning against her chest. When she reaches out, snagging the soldier’s arm, Hope makes a sound like a sob.

“Please,” he says, and he’s finally crying, voice loud and breaking, such a kid. “Please, please, Light, I don’t, _please_ \--”

She bites her tongue, because she doesn’t know what to say to make it better, and knows too many ways to make it worse. She pulls hard, all her weight, and the soldier’s limp body falls across them, pinning Hope to her. The soldier’s still alive, breath faint, and his hand falls open, fingers twitching. 

“Hope,” she murmurs, and Hope shakes in her lap. “Hope, you have to do this-- I’m going to be right here, and I won’t go of you, and--” she doesn’t really know what she’s saying. Doesn’t think he can hear her, anyway, because he’s crying too loud now, panicked sobs that are minutes away from full-blown screams. She swallows hard, because she’s pretty close to screaming right now, too.

“I can’t,” he cries, “I can’t, don’t _make me_ \--” And that’s it, that’s the thing. It’s Lightning staying back here, holding Hope in her lap while she tries to convince him to-- to what? Kill someone? Drink their blood? Bite into someone’s flesh, and feel it rise up around his teeth; feel their blood, salty and warm, rinse through his gums. It’s Lightning, because there’s no one else, because there aren’t any moms to hold their hands anymore, help them cross the street. 

“Stop it,” she snaps, and her voice sounds just as hysterical. “I can’t-- I’m not going to sit here and watch you _die_. I don’t care, I don’t care about any of this, they don’t _matter_.” She breathes in, feels her chest shake. When she wraps her arms tighter around Hope, he falls against her a little, but he turns his head away. “Please. Hope, please, just this once.” When he shivers, she says, final shove, “let me take care of you. Please.”

When she pulls the soldier’s body up, so his neck is bared and bent to them, Hope wipes his face. When she lies the edge of her knife against the soldier’s neck, where they can see the pulse, Hope lies his hands on Lightning’s thighs, and when she cuts, he digs in his fingers and lets out a moan like he’s dying.

“I don’t,” he says, and she puts her mouth next to his ear, and says, “Now,” and he drinks.

He chokes on the blood, stiffens in her arms and spits it out over the soldier’s neck. He gasps for breath, but when she presses her forehead in the hollow between his shoulders (and she wonders when he got so thin, that she can feel the knobs of his spine against her face), he sets his mouth back against the soldier’s neck, drinks again. 

It goes easier this time-- has to be going easier, because she can hear him swallow the blood down, then gasp for breath. Another swallow, and another breath. She counts in her head, gets to thirty or forty, and loses count. The sounds, slurping and a noisy swallowing, are making her sick to her stomach; when Hope bites, crunching through the soldier’s tendons, she has to bite back a gag.

It takes a long time. A long, long time. She keeps her eyes closed, and her head pressed against Hope’s back. She’s sweating, with fear or nerves or sickness, and she can feel the sweat run down her back, dampen Hope’s shirt. Her hands, still wrapped around Hope’s body, are slick with it. Hope crunches through the neck again, and Lightning can feel blood drip onto her arms. It is, she thinks, a very nasty feeling.

“Lightning,” Hope says in a very small voice, after the last crunch. His fingers are still digging into her thighs, and his hands feel as hot and sweaty as her own. She wonders if he’s scared, too. She shudders, feels his body stiffen. 

“ _Don’t_ ,” she says, “don’t _even_ \--”

After a moment, he says, still in a small voice, “Light?”

“Better.”

“Can we. I don’t think I can-- Can we stay? Like this. For a while.” His voice is tense, filled with something she doesn’t want to think about. Can’t think about.

“Yeah.” She turns her face against his back, rubs her cheek against the fabric of his shirt. She thinks of her mom, the way she used to be rocked in a chair when she was little. How, when she was sleepy and warm, her mom would carry her upstairs to her bed. How she didn’t want her mom to let go; how she didn’t want to have to get up from the rocking chair. She wonders if Hope’s mom used to rock him, too. “Yeah,” she says again, soft and gentle as she can. The kindness feels like a foreign tongue in her mouth. “We can stay like this for as long as you want.”

It has to be at least an hour, probably longer, before Hope says _Okay_ like a death knell. Lightning’s legs are cramped and bruised and when she lets go of Hope, her arms feel numb. It takes some shoving to get the soldier’s cold body off of them, and she tries not to look at its neck. Fails, and stares at the torn skin and muscles, the shattered bones. The soldier’s head is barely connected to its body, only by a few flaps of skin, and it makes Lightning’s stomach roll.

Hope fidgets next to her, looks nervous and gun-shy, like he’ll run if she looks at him wrong. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Wipes his hand across his lips, and smears blood across his cheek. Lightning moves, takes a step forward. Hope flinches, wipes his mouth again. More blood is smearing across his face. She swallows, then holds out her hand. When Hope takes it, his hand slick and warm in hers, she tugs him close, holds his hand tight.

“Come on,” she says, and she turns away so she won’t have to see his face. “Let’s go get cleaned up.”

x

It is two days later that Hope bites someone; he is skittish and awkward, and if Lightning knew how to coddle him, she would. He is careening through something; he smiles at them, but he jerks away whenever someone’s voice is raised. When Vanille holds his hand (and she always holds his hand now, plays with his hair, wraps her arms around his thin body; a penitence performed with love), his shoulders tighten up, rising up around his neck, but his mouth quirks, like he’s trying not to smile. It’s a little maddening, and maybe, Lightning thinks, it means things are healing.

“Teenagers,” Sazh says, like that explains away Hope’s everything. Vanille clears her throat, though is sounds more like a laugh, and Snow mutters something about bigger problems.

It’s two awkward, painful, beautiful days. Cocoon is beautiful, smells like rain and green, growing things; when she squints up into the darkening sky, Lightning can see the glint of Eden in the middle of her world, and they are always getting a little closer.

And sometimes, when they’re clambering over rocks and roots and gravity of their future, Hope laughs his awkward, skittish, teenaged laugh.

“He’s doing pretty good,” Snow says to Lightning, when they’re bringing up the rear. Lightning can hear Hope saying something to Vanille, something indistinct and quiet and wonderful in its banality. “Better than I thought. I thought, after he, you know.” Snow trails off, gives half a shrug, and Lightning licks her lips.

“Yeah,” she says, and there is something painful in the center of her chest, like fear and happiness twisted together. “Better than I thought.”

They have just broken their way through a line of PSICOM soldiers on the second night when Hope shuffles up to Lightning, reaches out and grabs her arm. He’s hanging back, looking stiff and uncertain, and Lightning tries to gentle her voice. “What?”

“I,” Hope says, and he stutters over it; everyone else is turning around, edging closer, and Hope looks like he’s beginning to blush. “I just, uh. I’ll catch up. To you.”

Lightning looks back over Hope’s shoulder, where PSICOM soldiers are crumpled in the shadows of tree roots. He’s little and thin, awkward and stilted, and she doesn’t want him to walk off into the night by himself; doesn’t want him to crunch into someone’s neck without her there to hold him up afterward.

She doesn’t want to lose him, in the forest or in Cocoon or in his own strange, broken head.

“Do you want me to,” she hedges, only half a question. Hope shakes his head, though, pulling his hand away from her arm. 

“No, it’s just--” He takes a step backward, and his mouth is quirking down, like he’s trying not to frown. It’s painful. “I’ll catch up. In a few minutes.”

“Okay,” Lightning says slowly, feeling hesitation climbing through her chest. She’s about to reach out and grab his hand, to force him to take her with him, when Sazh bumps against her, reaches out to shuffle Hope’s hair.

“Don’t take too long,” Sazh says, and Hope gives them all a horrified look before he scrambles backward, sinking into the night.

When Lightning tries to swallow, her throat feels tight; all she can hear is the dull roar of nighttime between the trees.

“He’ll be fine,” Sazh says gently, and he’s reaching out for Vanille’s hand. Vanille reaches back, and swings their hands. Lightning watches their hands swing, Vanille’s hand looking tiny and Sazh’s hand looking strong. A world of girls and men, swinging beside her. 

There is a moss-covered rock a few steps away. The steps feel awkward and clumsy, like her feet are numb. She sinks down onto the rock, and rests her arms on her knees; rests, in turn, her head upon her arms. Closes her eyes and listens to the nighttime’s roar.

“It will be fine,” she can hear Sazh say to Vanille, and Vanille says something back, something soft and tired and full of that exhausting love that is pulling them all along, a gravity in the center of their hearts.

She is half asleep, vague, fuzzy nightmares growing in the corners of her eyelids, when Hope stumbles back to them, tripping over a root or rock or lip of earth, a grave rising upwards. Snow calls her, says, “Sis,” and her back pops as she lifts her head from her arms.

There is blood on Hope’s face; just a little blood, a smear of blood, on the right side of his chin. Lightning can’t look away from it, can’t stand or hold out her hand or smile. She takes in a breath, shaky, and lets it out, and tires to figure out what Serah would say, because Serah could always fix the things Lightning broke.

“Got some tomato soup on you,” Sazh says blandly, and the words feel like a slap. Hope jerks backwards, his feet sliding on the leaves and moss underfoot, and Lightning feels all her muscles tense. “On your chin,” Sazh adds, and he thumbs his own chin, miming the smear.

“I didn’t,” Hope says, and he’s scrubbing the back of his hand against his face roughly. His eyes are glinting in the faint light; they look a little wide, a little wild. The muscles in Lightning’s body are twisting tighter.

“It’s cool,” Sazh says, still talking, just _talking_. He sounds bored, or maybe just a little amused. He’s grabbing Hope’s shoulder, yanking the kid closer, and then he’s licking his thumb, then swiping it over Hope’s chin. “Dajh still makes a mess when he eats. You’re all kids.”

And it is so fatherly, or maybe so motherly; it is something huge and powerful and stupid, and Lightning can hear herself laughing, a little crazy and a little stressed and a little lost in this world hanging in a big, big sky. Everything is falling apart, but maybe it’s falling together, too, and Sazh looks like her father and sounds like her mother and loves like her sister. Vanille is laughing, too, and Fang is looking a little amused, and Snow is looking like his stupid, stupid, _stupid_ heroic self.

Lightning holds out her hand, and it shakes; she can see it shake, like autumn leaves, and she reaches out, stretches as far as she can. It’s Snow that grabs her hand, holds on tight, and he pulls her up from the mossy stone. The leaves underfoot are slick and wet, and the nighttime is still roaring in their ears; she twines her fingers with Snow’s for a moment, just a moment, and she thinks, _if Serah was here--_ But Serah’s not here; her mother’s not here, her father’s not here. There’s no one here but five other pieces, broken pieces in a cheated game.

They’re the remnants, the fragments of the dead and the dying, the last pieces of their families. They’re a little broken, and a lot fucked up, and as they dance their way to Eden, six monsters in a monstrous world, she thinks they’re going to be alright.


End file.
